Lady Audley's Secret, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [world of reading .txt] 📗

his pockets?”

 

So the anniversary of that 30th of August, upon which George had seen

the advertisement of his wife’s death in the Times newspaper, came

round for the first time, and the young man put off his black clothes

and the shabby crape from his hat, and laid his mournful garments in a

trunk in which he kept a packet of his wife’s letters, her portrait, and

that lock of hair which had been cut from her head after death. Robert

Audley had never seen either the letters, the portrait, or the long

tress of silky hair; nor, indeed, had George ever mentioned the name of

his dead wife after that one day at Ventnor, on which he learned the

full particulars of her decease.

 

“I shall write to my cousin Alicia to-day, George,” the young barrister

said, upon this very 30th of August. “Do you know that the day after

tomorrow is the 1st of September? I shall write and tell her that we

will both run down to the Court for a week’s shooting.”

 

“No, no, Bob; go by yourself; they don’t want me, and I’d rather—”

 

“Bury yourself in Figtree Court, with no company but my dogs and

canaries! No, George, you shall do nothing of the kind.”

 

“But I don’t care for shooting.”

 

“And do you suppose I care for it?” cried Robert, with charming

naivete. “Why, man, I don’t know a partridge from a pigeon, and it

might be the 1st of April, instead of the 1st of September, for aught I

care. I never hurt a bird in my life, but I have hurt my own shoulder

with the weight of my gun. I only go down to Essex for the change of

air, the good dinners, and the sight of my uncle’s honest, handsome

face. Besides, this time I’ve another inducement, as I want to see this

fair-haired paragon—my new aunt. You’ll go with me, George?”

 

“Yes, if you really wish it.”

 

The quiet form his grief had taken after its first brief violence, left

him as submissive as a child to the will of his friend; ready to go

anywhere or do anything; never enjoying himself, or originating any

enjoyment, but joining in the pleasures of others with a hopeless,

uncomplaining, unobtrusive resignation peculiar to his simple nature.

But the return of post brought a letter from Alicia Audley, to say that

the two young men could not be received at the Court.

 

“There are seventeen spare bedrooms,” wrote the young lady, in an

indignant running hand, “but for all that, my dear Robert, you can’t

come; for my lady has taken it into her silly head that she is too ill

to entertain visitors (there is no more the matter with her than there

is with me), and she cannot have gentlemen (great, rough men, she says)

in the house. Please apologize to your friend Mr. Talboys, and tell him

that papa expects to see you both in the hunting season.”

 

“My lady’s airs and graces shan’t keep us out of Essex for all that,”

said Robert, as he twisted the letter into a pipe-light for his big

meerschaum. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do, George: there’s a glorious inn

at Audley, and plenty of fishing in the neighborhood; we’ll go there and

have a week’s sport. Fishing is much better than shooting; you’ve only

to lie on a bank and stare at your line; I don’t find that you often

catch anything, but it’s very pleasant.”

 

He held the twisted letter to the feeble spark of fire glimmering in the

grate, as he spoke, and then changing his mind, deliberately unfolded

it, and smoothed the crumpled paper with his hand.

 

“Poor little Alicia!” he said, thoughtfully; “it’s rather hard to treat

her letter so cavalierly—I’ll keep it;” upon which Mr. Robert Audley

put the note back into its envelope, and afterward thrust it into a

pigeon-hole in his office desk, marked important. Heaven knows what

wonderful documents there were in this particular pigeon-hole, but I do

not think it likely to have contained anything of great judicial value.

If any one could at that moment have told the young barrister that so

simple a thing as his cousin’s brief letter would one day come to be a

link in that terrible chain of evidence afterward to be slowly forged in

the only criminal case in which he was ever to be concerned, perhaps Mr.

Robert Audley would have lifted his eyebrows a little higher than usual.

 

So the two young men left London the next day, with one portmanteau and

a rod and tackle between them, and reached the straggling,

old-fashioned, fast-decaying village of Audley, in time to order a good

dinner at the Sun Inn.

 

Audley Court was about three-quarters of a mile from the village, lying,

as I have said, deep down in the hollow, shut in by luxuriant timber.

You could only reach it by a cross-road bordered by trees, and as trimly

kept as the avenues in a gentleman’s park. It was a lonely place enough,

even in all its rustic beauty, for so bright a creature as the late Miss

Lucy Graham, but the generous baronet had transformed the interior of

the gray old mansion into a little palace for his young wife, and Lady

Audley seemed as happy as a child surrounded by new and costly toys.

 

In her better fortunes, as in her old days of dependence, wherever she

went she seemed to take sunshine and gladness with her. In spite of Miss

Alicia’s undisguised contempt for her stepmother’s childishness and

frivolity, Lucy was better loved and more admired than the baronet’s

daughter. That very childishness had a charm which few could resist. The

innocence and candor of an infant beamed in Lady Audley’s fair face, and

shone out of her large and liquid blue eyes. The rosy lips, the delicate

nose, the profusion of fair ringlets, all contributed to preserve to her

beauty the character of extreme youth and freshness. She owned to twenty

years of age, but it was hard to believe her more than seventeen. Her

fragile figure, which she loved to dress in heavy velvets, and stiff,

rustling silks, till she looked like a child tricked out for a

masquerade, was as girlish as if she had just left the nursery. All her

amusements were childish. She hated reading, or study of any kind, and

loved society. Rather than be alone, she would admit Phoebe Marks into

her confidence, and loll on one of the sofas in her luxurious

dressing-room, discussing a new costume for some coming dinner-party; or

sit chattering to the girl with her jewel-box beside her, upon the satin

cushions, and Sir Michael’s presents spread out in her lap, while she

counted and admired her treasures.

 

She had appeared at several public balls at Chelmsford and Colchester,

and was immediately established as the belle of the county. Pleased with

her high position and her handsome house; with every caprice gratified,

every whim indulged; admired and caressed wherever she went; fond of her

generous husband; rich in a noble allowance of pin-money; with no poor

relations to worry her with claims upon her purse or patronage; it would

have been hard to find in the County of Essex a more fortunate creature

than Lucy, Lady Audley.

 

The two young men loitered over the dinner-table in the private

sitting-room at the Sun Inn. The windows were thrown wide open, and the

fresh country air blew in upon them as they dined. The weather was

lovely; the foliage of the woods touched here and there with faint

gleams of the earliest tints of autumn; the yellow corn still standing

in some of the fields, in others just falling under the shining sickle;

while in the narrow lanes you met great wagons drawn by broad-chested

cart-horses, carrying home the rich golden store. To any one who has

been, during the hot summer months, pent up in London, there is in the

first taste of rustic life a kind of sensuous rapture scarcely to be

described. George Talboys felt this, and in this he experienced the

nearest approach to enjoyment that he had ever known since his wife’s

death.

 

The clock struck five as they finished dinner.

 

“Put on your hat, George,” said Robert Audley; “they don’t dine at the

Court till seven; we shall have time to stroll down and see the old

place and its inhabitants.”

 

The landlord, who had come into the room with a bottle of wine, looked

up as the young man spoke.

 

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Audley,” he said, “but if you want to see your

uncle, you’ll lose your time by going to the Court just now. Sir Michael

and my lady and Miss Alicia have all gone to the races up at Chorley,

and they won’t be back till nigh upon eight o’clock, most likely. They

must pass by here to go home.”

 

Under these circumstances of course it was no use going to the Court, so

the two young men strolled through the village and looked at the old

church, and then went and reconnoitered the streams in which they were

to fish the next day, and by such means beguiled the time until after

seven o’clock. At about a quarter past that hour they returned to the

inn, and seating themselves in the open window, lit their cigars and

looked out at the peaceful prospect.

 

We hear every day of murders committed in the country. Brutal and

treacherous murders; slow, protracted agonies from poisons administered

by some kindred hand; sudden and violent deaths by cruel blows,

inflicted with a stake cut from some spreading oak, whose every shadow

promised—peace. In the county of which I write, I have been shown a

meadow in which, on a quiet summer Sunday evening, a young farmer

murdered the girl who had loved and trusted him; and yet, even now, with

the stain of that foul deed upon it, the aspect of the spot is—peace.

No species of crime has ever been committed in the worst rookeries about

Seven Dials that has not been also done in the face of that rustic calm

which still, in spite of all, we look on with a tender, half-mournful

yearning, and associate with—peace.

 

It was dusk when gigs and chaises, dog-carts and clumsy farmers’

phaetons, began to rattle through the village street, and under the

windows of the Sun Inn; deeper dusk still when an open carriage and four

drew suddenly up beneath the rocking sign-post.

 

It was Sir Michael Audley’s barouche which came to so sudden a stop

before the little inn. The harness of one of the leaders had become out

of order, and the foremost postillion dismounted to set it right.

 

“Why, it’s my uncle,” cried Robert Audley, as the carriage stopped.

“I’ll run down and speak to him.”

 

George lit another cigar, and, sheltered by the window-curtains, looked

out at the little party. Alicia sat with her back to the horses, and he

could perceive, even in the dusk, that she was a handsome brunette; but

Lady Audley was seated on the side of the carriage furthest from the

inn, and he could see nothing of the fair-haired paragon of whom he had

heard so much.

 

“Why, Robert,” exclaimed Sir Michael, as his nephew emerged from the

inn, “this is a surprise!”

 

“I have not come to intrude upon you at the Court, my dear uncle,” said

the young man, as the baronet shook him by the hand in his own hearty

fashion. “Essex is my native county, you know, and about this time of

year I generally have a touch of homesickness; so George and I have come